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The CFC: Connecting Canada to the World

Donald Petrie heads a master class with the CFC Actors Conservatory and Cineplex Entertainment Film Program participants.

The Canadian Film Centre is mentoring Canadian writers, directors and producers around the world.

TORONTO — Twelve months ago, the Canadian Film Centre -- the nation’s foremost school for advanced training and production in film, television and new media -- had just begun rolling out content labs and incubators to mentor Canadian writers, directors and producers.

The goal: to spin off cutting-edge content to sustain the careers of more than 1,400 alumni across a range of markets and digital platforms.

A year later, the hatchlings are flying.

"Movies are being made. People are getting deals. Actors are getting agents and being cast. TV shows are being financed and made,” CFC executive director Slawko Klymkiw says.

CFC graduates Tassie Cameron (1999) and David Wellington (1990) were key creatives on the ABC/Global Television series Rookie Blue. TV scribe and 2001 CFC graduate Rob Sheridan signed with WME and landed a blind script pilot deal with Warner Bros. Television for a sitcom.

And the inaugural Telefilm Canada Features Comedy Lab with Just for Laughs spawned the upcoming workplace feature Servitude from director Warren Sonoda, who has been mentored at the CFC by directors Donald Petrie and Ivan Reitman and writer Etan Cohen, among others.

With Servitude, the CFC linked Canadian talent to Hollywood mentors to fuel early creativity, find a market and distribution. "I was in contact with the director in giving thoughts and notes on pace, tempo and tone and all the other things that we think about right up until a week before production," Petrie recalls.

This depth in advice and coaching is demonstrated by the fact that the CFC comedy lab produced two more scripts to be shot this year: Two of Me, from writer-director Mina Shum and producer Stephen Hegyes, now being packaged by Hollywood casting agent and Judd Apatow veteran Allison Jones; and the romantic comedy That Burning Feeling, from writer Nicolas Citton and producer-director Jason James.

"So far, three out of five scripts have seen action. That’s a great track record for the program," says actor Eugene Levy, chair of the CFC comedy lab.

Kathryn Emslie, CFC director of films and TV programs, adds that the center’s incubator model is filling a gap between content development and exploitation at home and internationally. "It’s all in a larger game plan to increase the capacity of Canadians to produce high-quality content and to do that within a global context,” she says of such CFC programs as the Tribeca All Access and Sundance Festival Pass.

That strategy includes NBC Universal, a major CFC backer, helping creators get their original series concepts in front of the studios and Comcast channels.

"It’s really about trying to get us on the radar of some of the companies that NBC Universal deals with,” says TV writer and CFC alumni Denis McGrath (2001), who came through the NBC Universal Content Creator Program.

Of course, talent, creativity and storytelling have always been part of the CFC, which was launched by Norman Jewison in 1988. But new to the advance training centers’ DNA is figuring out how to support creators, how to finance content and how to build distribution networks around it.

And key to that strategy is steering Canada’s old-media dinosaurs into a new-media world by helping commercialize cutting-edge content.

A year since James Milward hatched the idea for a mobile app for location-based music discovery at the CFC/NBC Universal Multiplatform Matchmaking Program, he’s off with partners Romeo Candido and Davin Lengyel to the South by Southwest festival to pitch their business idea to SXSW Accelerator competition judges.

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Coming out of the initial one-week hot house for new digital-media ideas, Milward and his partners got CFC mentors and the music industry to share ideas on how Herd, their proposed iPhone app, can help artists, publishers and labels get new music to fans using GPS technology. "It’s really about getting all of their feedback on what’s possible and viable and what’s a realistic launch and monetization plan," Milward explains.

The Herd app illustrates how product emerging from CFC incubators with little funding needs time to develop and get out from under the warming lamps to finally tap venture capital funding.

Time, after all, is often as crucial as money when it comes to media product or service development.

Here the CFC steps in to provide Canadian content creators with support services, mentoring and networking opportunities before they jump into a tough fund-raising environment and make noise at festivals and markets.

For Klymkiw, backing spinouts is all about building an expanding support network for CFC graduates.

"The key to a lot of the programs is not only developing skills, it’s a question of developing capacity," he says. "Can the alumni who leave here with some certainty find work, and when they find work, will they be able to sustain work, and if they sustain work, will they inevitably be able to do work that makes a difference."

Here the CFC is measuring success not simply by critical or commercial success but by making its alumni part of the system.

"They’ve connected me with people all over," says Keon Mohajeri, a recent graduate of the CFC Actors Conservatory, which is chaired by Kiefer Sutherland. "When I flew down to Sundance, they connected me to former alumni. Through this network, my team is building and I have some excellent people around me as I start taking on more work in the U.S."

To build that community, the center is tapping the Canadian expat community in Los Angeles and other international networks. "As it gets tougher and tougher out there and financial structures keep changing around us, a community like ours has a larger role," Klymkiw insists.

Canadian players in Hollywood that are returning home to mentor CFC lab participants include Sutherland, Levy, House producer David Shore and Bones creator Hart Hanson.

"There’s so much great talent in Canada that works in Los Angeles in film and TV, so it’s a great opportunity to get access to some of them and to get access to their ideas and advice," says Roma Khanna, president of global networks and digital initiatives at NBC Universal and a CFC chair.

Equally important, the conditions favor the Canadians, the Bedouins of global TV, whose small home market has long made it crucial that they wander from Los Angeles to London, or Sydney to Shanghai, to make films and TV shows for the world market.

And the entrée for nomadic Canadians has long been the international co-production as a financing alternative to the studio system.

To change that, the CFC is pushing ahead with its ambitious Canada-UK Script Incubation Program, collaboration among the BBC, BBC Worldwide and Canadian broadcaster Shaw Media to come up with two high-concept series that can be structured as international co-productions. Ultimately, this is about business as much as creativity.

"The mandate that we’ve had for the past couple years is not only about developing Canadian talent but taking that talent to the world stage, be it in a partnership with NBC Universal and BBC, and helping them find their way into the international market," Khanna said.

Writer McGrath agrees it’s a natural move for NBC Universal to cherry-pick the best product coming out of CFC programs it backs.

"It’s pretty savvy for NBC Universal to say, 'We’re always looking for the next big thing, so it makes sense to see what’s the cream of the (Canadian) crop, and do they have the sensibility to make something new?'" he says.

The CFC’s Canadian cream has been noticed elsewhere. Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan led a master class for the CFC Writers Workshop at the Whistler Film Festival in British Columbia for three local screenwriters with dramatic feature films in development. "There were three scripts, and I was really surprised at the level of all of them," Sheridan said. "Usually it’s a real headache as you have something rather undeveloped. But each was in an advanced stage of development. Each has commercial potential."